After | Film Review

Hey Guys x

I've actually been aware of the 'After' story for a while. I'm not a One Direction fan in particular, but I am really into the fanfic community, and have read more fanfics than I can count (and written a fair few myself), so when After was being written I had it saved in my Wattpad library and read a few chapters. I didn't hate it, but it didn't capture my attention enough to read all 100 chapters. Anyway, I always had it on the back burner, saved a few chapters in, so when I heard that it was going to be made into a movie, I was really surprised - especially because of the mixed feelings surrounding it. But of course, when it came out on Netflix recently, I had to watch and review it!

When I'm preparing to write a review, I write notes in a notebook and then write those notes out. Well, for After, I have more notes than I've ever written on a movie. It kind of feels like a really strange review because the points that I've written contradict with my overall view of the film.
Also there will be mild spoilers in the review, but nothing that isn't already guessed from the poster.

Tessa Young (Josephine Langford) is the ultimate 'good girl'. She does everything she's supposed to do, she's dating the boy that makes her mum happy, and she wouldn't dream of breaking the rules. However, going to college opens up a whole new world for Tessa. When she meets Hardin Scott (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin), Tessa begins to question the person that she thought she was. Is she the good girl that she presents to the world, or are there hidden depths to her that only Hardin can uncover?

Now, this is where the contradictory bit comes in. I've seen a lot of reviews about the movie (and the book, which I'll talk about at the end of the review) and I mainly watched it to laugh at how bad it was. And I think this is going to be reflected in the review. However, I did not hate this film at all, and I'll try to explain why... after I talk about all the bad things!

Let's start with Hardin Scott. From the second you meet him, there's something off about him. His dialogue is really bad and cringey. No one really talks like that, and if anything it's laughable and annoying in equal measure. You just know that if you knew someone like him in real life you'd automatically hate him.
But in addition to this, at least at the beginning, he's also really creepy. In no other romantic movie would this character be the love interest - he would be the one that the girl gets with when everyone knows that he's not right for her.

But when taking about Hardin, we can't forget to talk about Noah (Dylan Arnold), Tessa's boyfriend. It was obvious right away that the writers tried to make him a bit of a douche and really incompatible with Tessa so that her behaviour with Hardin seems more acceptable, but if he was that bad, why were they together in the first place? There's even a point in the movie when she calls him her best friend, so why did they half-heartedly try to make him the bad one?

From their first interaction, I wrote down that Landon (Shane Paul McGhie) is the only character who deserves Tessa's, and the audience's, time. He is such a sweet guy, and a much better option for Tessa than either of the other two men.

Speaking of Landon, where is Tessa's friendship group? Where are her people? She adopted Steph's (Khadijha Red Thunder) friendship group, but it seems like she has nobody but Steph and Hardin's friends in her life. Considering that she barely has classes with them, it surprises me that she wouldn't have made more friends just by being around different people.

Now, there is undeniable chemistry between Tessa and Hardin, but for a while there's no reason that I could see why Tessa would gravitate to Hardin, other than him just showing up and annoying her periodically until she caved in.
But even before anything happens between them, the way that Tessa acts while she's still in a relationship (the lake scene, for example) just isn't okay, and shouldn't be glorified. Tessa seems to have an 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude to her relationship with Noah, and in no other film would she be the character that the audience is supposed to sympathise with.
Because, while it's totally okay to change as a person when you go to college, it's not okay to hurt innocent people because you can't control yourself, or don't think that person is worth having a conversation with. This is my main problem with the character of Tessa, and suggests that she was probably never the 'good girl' that she tried to make people believe she was.

Once Tessa and Hardin's relationship gets going, it's nice to see the ways that their personalities change through being together, which is what can happen in normal real-life relationships.
However, the character of Tessa changes so much that it feels like no one, the writer(s), director or actress actually know who this character is as a person. All they know about her is that she dates Noah and then falls for Hardin, and that's the extent of her personality, and that sucks because she could have been such an interesting character.
I also feel like the film would be a hell of a lot better if Tessa never had a boyfriend to begin with.

The plot twist/secret or whatever you want to call it is awful. Like, it's a great way to add drama to the story, and it makes a lot of things make sense, but it completely ruined any positive feelings you might have gained for Hardin's character. Everything that he convinced the audience he wasn't (an arsehole, mainly), just got crushed and he turned back into the guy that we always thought he was. It also makes the whole relationship seem fake and toxic, and I do not understand how they possibly come back from that in sequels.

But the thing is, having said all of this, overall I actually really enjoyed the movie. There were so many glaringly obvious problems, but when you buy into the absurdity of these characters and the situations that they find themselves in, it becomes fun, and definitely more enjoyable than I ever thought it would be.
So enjoyable, in fact, that after watching it I had to buy the book. One because I want to compare it to the film, but two so I can see if it's as bad as everyone thinks it is, and I can't wait to read it.

4.5/10 (because whilst I enjoyed it, I can't pretend it's a good film when it's clearly not)

Lou